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| Chad, suited up in stylish Icelandic rain gear. |
After arriving back home on the last Amtrak train to New York on Saturday, I was greeted by the cheery, although somewhat frenzied scene of our weekly farmer's market at Fort Greene Park. Young families shopping for produce offered me a special kind of reassurance that I hadn't lost my mind by rushing back before the storm. Chad and I finished stocking up and headed home to make our final preparations.
And then, we waited.
It began to rain steadily late in the afternoon, but even as we made our way toward sleep for the night, the wind still hadn't picked up much. We learned that our windows, kept perpetually open in the warmer months, are actually quite effective by way of noise reduction, as we slept right through the "howling" wind reported by others in the area. Chad got up twice to check things out, but we slept quite well and woke early to survey the results of Irene: (from our window) lots of small debris, soggy ground.
Later in the day, as it became clear that the storm had passed, we decided to explore the neighborhood.
The streets were littered with leaves and twigs punctuated by the occasional downed branch and even a couple of small trees, which always makes me sad. Playgrounds were under a few inches of water, and windows were taped*. We made our way to Fort Greene Park to survey any arboreal damage there, and found the most interesting storm relic by far. The hollowed out limb of a very large tree near the southeast entrance of the park made for a nice little hive for a colony of honeybees. It turns out, however, that it was also left so weakened as not to survive Irene's high winds. The hive was split in two, it would seem, with the majority of the colony protecting the queen high in the remnants of their home. We're concerned for those poor little guys and curious as to where they will go next and how they will get there. I feel sure that my bee keeping friend Gabrielle could capture them, but I do believe her hives are full.
How did you weather the storm? Hopefully safely.
*Listening to the play-by-play on WNYC, we laughed as one expert taught us that taping windows is actually entirely ineffective, stating: "the only thing that taping your windows on Saturday will ensure is that you'll spend the better part of Sunday scraping it off again". Cute.
